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Shticking Close To Shore

Silly `Son-in-law' Succeeds In Spite Of Its Material

`Son-In-Law" is a comedy that outstrips its aspirations. It could so easily be a movie you're embarrassed to be caught laughing at.

Its plot is based on rank improbabilities and its star-the mannered MTV phenomenon Pauly Shore-has the most annoying shtick since the prime of Jerry Lewis.

But because of canny directing by Steve Rash ("The Buddy Holly Story"), whose zippy pace makes light of the story's unlikelihood while taking advantage of Shore's outrageous ad libs, "Son-In-Law" takes on the zany quality of Italian farces ("Johnny Stecchino," for example) sent to U.S. art houses every year. It helps to visualize it with subtitles.

Shore, whose presence is rather like that of an addled puppy with severe mood swings, plays the "resident adviser" in the coed dorm of the L.A. university where a wholesome South Dakota farmgirl named Rebecca Warner (Carla Gugino) is assigned her freshman year.

Rebecca finds the exotic California dorm scene threatening until Shore, whose nickname in the film is "Crawl" (don't ask), initiates her to West Coast pleasures, encouraging her to exchange jeans for purple tights, long brunette hair for a dyed red pageboy, and the campus for Venice Beach. (The ankle tattoo is overkill, perhaps, but it is a comedy, remember.)

Credit this movie with not patronizing Middle Americans. When Rebecca goes home for Thanksgiving, bringing Crawl along, her disbelieving parents are shown as knowledgeable, hard-working types with a quite reasonable aversion to the newcomer's antics. ("Chickens!" he shrieks, eyeing the hencoop. "Extra crispy or regular?")

They're not Hollywood's usual Grant Wood stereotypes-stuffy, petty and hopelessly out of it. But they are prosperous, with a splendid Victorian homestead, which may misrepresent the farmers of America in another, ironic, way.

"Son-In-Law," of course, is about how the Warners and their unnerving guest arrive at a state of mutual appreciation. But it also manages-and this is what distinguishes it from other star-shtick vehicles-to be about Rebecca confronting her ambitions, about Rebecca's mom rediscovering her sexuality, about Rebecca's dad getting a new slant on his relationship with his irascible father and with an adolescent son who prefers computers to farming. All of this is given a facile, sitcommy touch, but it adds starch to what otherwise would be a limp business.

Rash does a remarkable job of letting Shore's off-the-wall comic personality inhabit the script without bending it out of shape. Like an interior designer on a limited budget, he dresses up the movie's unsightly moments so that we ignore them. When the script calls for goofiness that is pointless and unfunny, as when Shore commandeers a combine and attacks a field of corn, Rash orchestrates the scene-with music and aerial photography-to give it visual significance.

The director is helped by a solid supporting cast. Carla Gugino is a winning ingenue with the ability to register steeliness when called upon. And Lane Smith, whose career includes a Drama Desk Award for his appearance on Broadway in "Glengarry Glen Ross," brings depth to the role of Rebecca's father.